Chapter 42

*Zayn's POV*

A waiter leads us to a booth, and Jessie and I sit down across from each other.

I watch her as she sits down. I am sort of staring, but I can't help it. This is the first time I've seen Jessie in two months.

She is wearing a flowly floral shirt and a cardigan. Her hair pulled up, showing her makeupless face. Her hands come together on the table, and her thumbs circle around each other. She is staring off.

Physically, she has not changed at all. But I notice her demeanor is off. Solely by looking at her, I can tell how sad she is. I can't blame her. Today is the anniversary of probably the worst day of her life.

I have no idea how to lighten the mood. I don't know if I should lighten the mood. Maybe she wants to talk about her father and keep the tone serious. She's given me no clues. It's a touchy subject that I know well, which is why I'm so cautious to get into it.

We aren't talking much in the beginning. I stare at her. She stares at the table. I don't bother her, I know she is thinking. I just try to guess how she is feeling. I imagine depressed. I also guess what she could be thinking, and why she invited me out. Especially the last one. I would never have thought that today would be a day she'd want to see me.

The waiter comes by with great timing, interrupting our speechless date. He drops off our waters, then grabs the pen from behind his ear and pulls out a little notepad from his pocket. "Are you ready to order?" he asks us with his cheerful waiter voice.

I glance at Jess to make sure she's ready, and she nods at me in conformation.

I turn to the waiter. "Could I get a slice of pumpkin pie?" I ask. "With whipped cream."

"And a slice of banana cream for me, please," Jessie adds in. Her voice is emotionless. But it's nice to hear her say anything.

The waiter scribbles our orders. "Alright, thank you." He clicks his pen and turns away.

Suddenly, I get this idea that I consider great. I reach out to the waiter before he can leave. "Also," I say, and the waiter turns to me. "Can we get a couple of kid's menus?"

"Kid's menus?" I hear Jessie question.

Maybe it's because of her confusion, maybe it's because it's the first time I've seen her express an emotion other than distressed today, I smirk. "Yes," I say to her and the waiter.

The waiter gives me a weird look. "Sure..." he responds doubtfully. "I'll get that for you right now."

As the waiter disappears, I lean back against the wall of the booth staring at the confused girl across from me.

"Kid's menus?" Jessie asks again.

"Yeah. So we could play the games," I say, like the reason is completely obvious.

She closes her eyes and chuckles, sliding down a little in her seat.

To be honest, I'm so proud I made her laugh. My heart lifts and drops as I see her smile. It makes me hopeful.

The waiter comes back very soon and places a menu and a box of crayons in front of me and one of each in front of Jessie.

We both open our paper menus to the part with all the connect-the-dots and the word searches. I find a game I like and point at it. "Tic-Tac-Toe," I suggest as I pull the red crayon from my box. "I'll be X."

She smiles. "I guess I'll be O."

I place my menu in the middle of the table so we can play together. I start the game, crossing my X into the middle box.

Her hands slowly come up to the paper, and she carefully traces an O into a box.

I watch her face as she does so. Completely devoid of any emotion.

I immediately worry about it. Maybe she is dying on the inside. Maybe my Tic-Tac-Toe idea wasn't as genius and amusing as I thought. I decide to speak up. I throw a random X onto the paper and try to speak. "H-How are you?" I ask. Her eyes flash up to mine, still without emotion, still making me wonder how she is feeling. I swallow. "Today, I mean."

Her gaze falls to the table. She draws in another O. "I'm okay today," she says with a shrug. "Eve, my mom and I visited my dad's grave this morning. We put some flowers around it."

I picture what she is saying, comparing her probable feelings to what I felt in my situation. For ten years past the event, I can imagine that the memory is vivid, the pain is still real. But worst of all, that void that nothing can fill is still there. I can't imagine it being okay for her today.

"Isaac couldn't make it out here. I called him and we talked for a bit," she continues. She puts her crayon down and brings her arms to her body and folds them against her chest. "I just can't believe it's already been ten years," she says.

Everything she says strikes something in me. Her words reminds me of how I felt when I lost Perrie. Confused, depressed, and lonely. I realize why she invited me out. We've been through this, both of us, and I could relate to her about it. "It's crazy how quickly things can go by," I mutter, thinking about my own tragedies. I put a random X in a box.

"It really is." She takes a breath and draws a circle in a box. "I'm going over to my mom's tonight," she says. "We're going to watch some home videos and things with Eve. Eve never really knew him, and I just want to show her how great he was. I'm just glad that my mom's supportive, even though they had broken up. She talks about him like how I remembered him, which is what I want Eve to see. It helps so much."

I'm speechless. I love how she and her family want to commemorate him, and how she wants Eve to get to know him. "I'm sure he was a great man," I tell her.

"The greatest."

She stops paying attention to reality again, staring off , looking through things instead of at them. I let her, because I led her to it by asking about her dad. I'm not annoyed or anything. I really understand. I did the same thing, and probably will in the future.

I don't want to say I get bored, but after a while, I do. I try to find something small to keep me entertained. While she's not looking, I sneak in an extra X on the Tic-Tac-Toe board. I quickly pull my arm away from the paper. "Oh, look. I won," I point out to her. I rest my chin in my hand, spreading my fingers partly over my mouth to hide my smile.

She wrinkles up her forehead and checks the menu. She glances back to me with a frown, then picks up the paper and checks it again. "You cheated!" she says to me.

I shake my head no, but I'm laughing on the inside. "I don't know what you're talking about," I say with horribly obvious undertones of amusement.

Her frown becomes an annoyed grin. She crosses her arms and avoids my eyes, and I laugh at her.

We don't have time for anymore fake arguments; the waiter brings us our pies- both with plenty of whipped cream. I dig right in, hardly giving the plate time to touch the table before I cut my first bite with my fork. Jessie gets her pie after me, and she thanks the waiter as he puts the plate in front of her. She grabs her fork.

A lot of me is thinking that the sad talk is over now, considering that the Tic-Tac-Toe incident interrupted. Maybe it is done. I decide to test it out. "You know, we haven't gotten pie since high school," I say.

Her eyes quickly depart from mine to the table. "I know," she says softly. She takes a small bite of her pie.

I furrow my brow. "You're not going to tell me why we are now?" I ask.

Her eyes flatten into a 'don't give me that bullshit' look. She takes in a breath and exhales: "You know why."

The best feeling I get when I annoy her spreads through me. I smile. Of course I know why. I've had plenty of time to figure out why, and now I'm concluding it's a reason with three connecting parts. First, I've been through a similar tragedy as hers, so she wants me to be with her today so I can relate to her. Second, we did the same thing we are doing today in high school. Third, she is just as anxious as I am to end our hiatus, and this is the most convenient way. But the fact that she's admitting to it gives me so much confidence. "Oh. Yeah," I remark with a smirk.

She looks up at hearing my voice with a poor attempt of a hidden smile. I watch her cut her pie with her fork and lift it to her mouth, completely clean and without missing a crumb.

I laugh to myself at her care. I follow her example and take another bite of my pie, then I try to spark more conversation. I think of talking to her about Harry, but I'm not sure how badly she would want that conversation to happen. As I try to produce better topics to discuss, I find that nothing else comes to mind. The only things that register are the death of her father, the date we had four years ago, or Harry. I attempt to take a safer route, cautiously bringing up the past few months. "So how've you been?" I ask as casually as possible, though I'm stiffening up. She focuses her attention on me, with big eyes that are sensing my nervousness. "I mean, since-". I hesitate. I don't know how to word my next thoughts. What I'm trying to say is since she came to my house and almost fucked me but didn't.

She scrunches up her nose. "Since we saw each other last?" she says, finishing my sentence.

Relief washes over my tense body as she fixes what I was trying to convey. I relax back into my seat and nod in response to her.

Her fingers move to the straw in her water, beginning to twirl around the ice, her eyes focused intensely on what she is doing. "I'm better than I was," she begins. Her voice comes out cool and even, something I wasn't actually expecting. She glances to me. "I haven't seen or heard from Harry since we broke up."

I clench my jaw, knowing that the break up is a lot of my fault. I still feel bad about my involvement in what happened, but I'm not exactly complaining about the outcome. "I'm sorry," I say, but my voice comes out wrong, a little more breathy than I intended.

She catches my eyes, waving her hands to stop my thoughts. "No it's okay," she says. I slightly frown, and I think she notices it. She continues. "It was basically mutual. I'm okay now." It kind of makes me happy that her voice doesn't carry any sound of lying. She seems somewhat depressed talking about him, but I think it's because today's not a great day for her, not because feelings are still there.

Her fingernails drum on the table, and her eyes fix onto mine. "Niall told me Harry is moving," she says in a level voice. The drumming stops.

My eyes widen. "Really?"

Her lips thin into a small smile. "Yeah."

I can feel the grin starting on my face. I try to compose myself, to act interested in the conversation, but all I can think is that she's telling me that Harry is out of the picture.

"He has a friend in New York, actually," she says with the same sort of shocked attitude.

"New York?" I ask in a similar voice.

"Yeah. It's crazy."

"That's really crazy." Our words said it. It's crazy. It seems that the odds are starting to work for me. The only possible problem now is that she's still not over him. I'm assuming that's not true, but I would like to be sure. "How do you feel about it?" I ask as gingerly as I can.

You know how you hope for the best even when you're telling yourself to expect the worst? That's me now. I'm nervous, and I'm praying it's all done between them. Even with signs saying yes, it's over, I hate the little nagging doubt in the back of my mind.

She raises an eyebrow and slowly shakes her head. "I don't feel about it."

I let go of my breath that I didn't know I was holding. Relief, extreme relief, and excitement run through me, reaching every inch of my body, coursing through me like electricity, making me feel like I'm going to fly out of my own skin. I lean on the table on my elbows and clasp my hands together, trying to hold onto something that could keep me calm. "Really?" I ask smiling.

She nods.

"Then we won't talk about it," I say.

She begins to tap her fork on her plate limply and almost methodically, but what I notice is that she's smiling at the ground the whole time. She's just as happy as I am.

Silence prevails, but even the silence says it all. It's kind of a sappy saying, but it's true. By looking at her, I know it's going to work out between us. I just feel it so strongly. It's strange, but the feeling is there, and I'm not ignoring it.

God she makes me happy. I don't know what it is about her. She's irrefutably the easiest person to annoy, and that's inexplicably fun. But I know it's so much more than that.

She quickly lifts up her head and stares at me. She wrinkles her forehead. "You're smiling," she notes.

My smile grows into a grin. "I smile when I'm having a good time," I say back.

She exhales a small laugh. "You're having a good time?"

"I always have a good time when I'm with you."

Her eyes leave mine again. She brushes some hair out of her face, and I can easily see reddening on her cheeks. "You're really sweet sometimes," she says quietly, taking a glance at me.

"I'm just telling the truth," I say. Then I realize I can use this moment to annoy her. "Actually, what I meant to say is that I usually have a good time with you. Sometimes I absolutely cannot bear being around you."

She scoffs. "Wow, Zayn. You're a peach to be around, too."

I chuckle.

She sighs heavily and quickly. "You know, I'm really glad I came here with you," she says.

"You are?" I ask.

"I am," she says in an as-a-matter-of-fact tone. "I just love how you keep me level when everything is chaotic. Thanks."

The funny thing is that I want to say the same thing to her. "You're welcome," I say instead.

As do most sentimental moments, the situation develops into silence. I don't want to say anything, though, so everything's taking a turn towards awkward.

"Wanna see who can finish the word search first?" Jessie proposes, interrupting the impending awkwardness.

"Sure," I respond quickly with a chuckle in my voice. "We both know I'm going to win."

I hear her scoff as we get our kid's menus ready, I'm already looking for words to circle while she's going over rules. (I don't know how she can put rules into a word search, but she does.)

Needless to say, I win. After I do, she accuses me of cheating again, which isn't untrue. We finish our food and we walk outside together with intentions of leaving. But we quickly end up disregarding our intentions, ending up talking more outside of the restaurant until we both are shivering. The cold gets to us, and in the end, it's the reason why our conversations end.

Jess readjusts the strap of her purse on her shoulder. "I should get going," she says in that voice that everyone uses when they're saying goodbye. She jabs her thumb over her shoulder. "It's a bit of a drive to my mom's house."

"Alright," I say. "I'll call you sometime."

She nods and grins.

I reach out to hug her, wrapping my arms around her, and she does the same to me. The hug lingers, in a way that says thank you, and I understand what you're feeling and I'll miss you all in one. "Hope the rest of your night is nice," I say, the sound muffled by her shoulder.

"It'll be nice." She leaves the hug. "Thank you, Zayn," she says once more. "I'll see you later."

She and I walk to our cars in different directions. I look over my shoulder a few times to see her. She leaves before me, on her way to her mother's house.

I drive home, realizing that she gave my night of doing nothing the best interruption it could've had.